“You’re an idiot.”
“Oh now he speaks,” says the leader, slapping the table, “we must have hit close to home.”
“We came to help you! You’re fighting us.”
“My nephew was in Khaf’Jadeed working. Now he is dead. Who killed him?” He leans in towards Peter, grabbing him by the chin. “Who killed him!”
Peter looks down—no! Do not give in. They deserved it!
The leader nods and the torturer unbinds one of his wrists. He grabs the free hand and ties it against the table with Peter’s fingertips hanging over the edge.
“When I ask a question, you answer. You don’t answer it correctly, one of your fingers get a surprise.”
“Let me go! Don’t, please don’t do this!”
He waits till Peter becomes quiet again. “What is the regional strength of your military in the Kuplar province?”
“I don’t know that,” Peter says hoarsely. The leader shakes his head. The torturer places the pliers on his pinky finger. The rusty metal teeth clamp around the fingertip.
No! “Ah! Fucking god, please stop.” The nail is ripped off. “STOP! Fucking stop!”
“Then tell me the correct answer,” says the leader.
“Oh god, fuck,” mutters Peter. “My finger. Please let me free.”
“Rambling again, suit yourself.” The leader rests against his stool. The clamps move across to the next finger.
“Please don’t!”
“Answer the question.”
“I don’t know.” The torture tears the next nail off. “Fucking Jesus! Please, god please! I don’t know.” Peter starts to cry bitterly.
“Do the rest of that hand before we move on,” says the leader.
The next nail begins to rip. “No! No! Fuck! Ah!”
Then the next.
“Jesus no! Please fucking stop. What is going on! Help! I have to be free. I can’t be caged! You can’t control me!” Peter rolls his head and his body shakes violently in the bounds. They begin punching him again.
“God listen to this guy,” laughs the leader. “Fucking loony. See, these Earthlings aren’t that tough.”
They reach the final nail, his thumb. Peter cries out.
Kill them all!
“God, fucking, ah!”
Kill them, you control yourself! You control them!
“Stop please,” says Peter.
No! Dare them to continue. You will only hurt them more!—create a greater offering. Find strength in me! Fresh tears run down his face. Yes, I can feel their power, they are of rage.
“Alright, get the iron rod,” says the leader. “He won’t seem to crack.” The torturer exits outside Peter’s vision behind him to an underground tunnel.
“You’re going to go even further?” says the sniper.
“Further? I barely got started. This fucker is going to fry.”
“I think he’s had enough,” says the sniper.
The leader rotates around on his chair to face the sniper. “Are you fucking okay? What’s wrong with you? Don’t forget who the leader is here, I make the shots. And don’t forget what our cause is either. What we’re fighting for. That bastard,” the leader points his arm back at Peter, “deserves everything we can possibly do to him. He’s killed some our own friends.”
The sniper withholds himself from saying anything more. Suddenly gunfire and yelling come from the tunnel behind Peter. The torturer sent to get the iron rod falls forward into the room with his back full of bullet holes.
The sniper runs to a hidden tunnel covered by maps and posters, and crawls away. The leader rises as he reaches for a firearm. Soldiers with bright headlights enter into the room over the fallen body. “Drop your weapon!” says the point man. The leader raises his firearm instead.
BANG!
A bullet bursts through the leader’s chest, and he twists backwards over the supply rack from which he armed himself.
“Bloody hell!” says the point man as the fire squad clears the room, “It’s one of those American Hell Dogs” The squad unties Peter, and they wrap a damp rag around his tortured hand.
“British Grenadiers here, and you’re lucky chap, we just saved you,” says the squad leader as he continues to pan the room.
Peter falls to his knees, the strength slowly coming back to his suspended limbs. He maintain his gaze on the hidden tunnel.
Go after him. Kill him!
“Oui,” says the squad leader, “You good?”
“Yeah, let me get my stuff,” says Peter. “I’ll follow you out later,”
“It’s not proper policy to free a POW, to just leave them on their own.”
“I’ll be fine.” Peter rises shakily to the table, grabbing his confiscated belongings. “I need some time to think stuff out.”
“We will be directly above where we are now.” The grenadier points his finger at the earth ceiling. “Follow the tunnel, it’s an easy one to the surface.” The squad leaves the room as their headlights illuminate the underground tunnel.
Peter grabs the knife that killed Rommel from earlier off the table, and enters the hidden hole. He crawls through the hastily made passageway, his knees and hands sinking into the displaced earth as he moves along. At the end is a dim light. As Peter comes out, he see the sniper on his knees facing an idol—one not of me! The sniper looks back at Peter in horror. Peter breaks out of the tunnel into the room as the sniper limps for his Dragunov.
Peter charges and tackles him, knocking the gas lamp over in the process. Its oil spills onto the floor around them, the uncontrolled flame licking up the oil into a firewall around the room and catching fire to the books and curtains around the idol. Peter smacks the sniper’s thigh wound disabling him, then pins one of his hands down, and jabs the palm of the other with the knife.
“Stop!” says the sniper.
He killed Rommel. Kill him slowly like they all tried to you back there. “I am the one in control. I am the one with the power here.”
Peter punches the man repeatedly in the face as he cries out. Just like the worthless thug in Nova Carthago. He stabs his other hand with the knife. He pulls it out and thrusts it into his side keeping it there. The man moans and gags through his swollen face. Peter pauses for a moment out of breath.
The man’s face is a beaten pulp, but yet he speaks, “Stop, you are becoming a monster. Don’t be what I am, what the aliens are.”
“What the fuck are you talking about,” says Peter, his hands soaked in the rebel’s blood.
“You don’t have to become a monster,” the man chocks on his bloated tongue and broken teeth, he turns to spit some out, “don’t let the war destroy you. Like it has our world.”
“Your world,” Peter snorts. Why are you listing to him? Just cut his tongue out so you don’t have to hear his shit. “You killed Rommel. I am going to kill you regardless.”
“I have killed many people. I regret every single one of them, even the Herculeans. Don’t be what I am soldier boy, go home, leave, to your home that isn’t destroyed yet.”
Through his gored and fucked up face distorted by Peter’s hands… he could see a fatherly type concern and sadness, a true regret of his past actions.
No! You fucking hate him. You hate all of these fucking people. The whole goddamn planet. You only love me! Love killing! “I can’t leave, I was sent here, and this is what I became.”
“Do you like killing? The act of ending life?” he says, barely speaking through his ruined face.
Yes, yes you do. It’s the ultimate freedom, the complete control over somebody else. To end them. Real unadulterated power. “It’s the only way I feel in control.” Really, why are you still talking to him?